Original content

English translation

Shibli — may God the Exalted sanctify his secret — was seized by a spiritual ecstasy, and they took him to the madhouse. A group went to gaze upon him. He asked, 'Who are you?' They said, 'Your friends.' He picked up a stone and rushed at them, and they all fled. He laughed and said, 'Come back, O pretenders! For friends do not flee from friends, nor do they shy away from the stone of their affliction.'

That one is a true lover who, however much enmity He sees from the Beloved, grows all the more loving; Though he receive upon his head a thousand stones of cruelty from Him, The foundation of his love grows only firmer thereby.

And they also relate of him that once he fell ill, and the caliph sent a Christian physician to treat him. The physician asked him, 'What does your heart desire?' He said, 'That you become a Muslim.' He said, 'If I become a Muslim, will you grow well and rise from your sickbed?' He said, 'Yes!'

Then he presented the faith to him, and the physician embraced faith, and Shibli rose from his bed with no trace of illness left upon him. Then the two went together before the caliph and recounted the tale. The caliph said, 'I thought I had sent a physician to a sick man; in truth I had sent a sick man to a physician.'

Whoever has fallen sick from the onslaught of love Knows the meeting with the Beloved to be his physician; When the heavenly physician sets foot at his bedside, He bestows healing from the very malady of existence.